Shades of Red
by Cyberwolf
Summary: all shadows and thoughts and motions with the enemy. [sequel to 'Redshift']
1. themes one through thirty three

**Title**: Shades of Red  
**Character(s)**: Tenten, Uchiha Sasuke  
**Genre:** drama/general  
**Rating: **PG-13  
**Notes**: 33 things that happened during **Redshift**.

* * *

o1. – Ring 

Tenten smiles weakly, through a whirling in her head that she thinks is a concussion; she is down, but Sasuke is hedged in by a circle of swords.

o2. – Hero

She used to daydream about someone from Konoha coming to rescue her – her team, or Naruto who dares the impossible, or Neji alone with his white eyes and cool invincibility – but she stops after a while.

o3. – Memory

What she remembers of her time in Sound before Sasuke are incoherent, stuttering snapshots – pain, and screaming, and extremes of sensation.

o4. – Box

Sasuke never restrained her – but he knew, and she knew, that there was a point beyond which she _must not_ go – that she lived inside an invisible box.

o5. – Run

When he tells her to go, she hesitates too long – the Sound knows she is escaping, and she has to outrun too many ninjas.

o6. – Hurricane

She summons four smoky dragons that whirl and twine about her – watchers think of being in the eye of a storm.

o7. – Wings

When she sees Sasuke in his second-level Curse Seal form, she only remarks that his wings cannot possibly enable him to fly – and launches into a long discussion about aerodynamics, bone density, and weight-to-lift ratio.

o8. – Cold

Although they are underground she is never chilled – living near a fire-user, she is often overheated, though.

o9. – Red

His eyes begin to haunt her dreams.

1o. – Drink

Once, some Sound shinobi sneaked a potent liquor into her flask – Sasuke coolly crippled them for it, not for the drink but for what they said they would do to her when she was drunk.

11. – Midnight

They often spar at night – midnight becomes just as common to her as noon.

12. – Temptation

Kabuto develops a new aphrodisiac, meant for use in interrogations and seduction missions – Sasuke hesitates for a moment before refusing the little test-bottle Kabuto offers him.

13. – View

Sasuke strips off his white tunic and uses it to mop his streaming forehead, while Tenten pretends she is still unconscious.

14. – Music

Sound Village was full of music – but Tenten never forgot that it was meant for use in battle.

15. – Silk

She never does find out what happens to her clothes from Konoha; but Sasuke dresses her in black and red, and she learns to be content with that.

16. – Cover

She learns to lie for him, to protect him against even his own fellow Sound-nin.

17. – Promise

Sasuke promises her things all the time: _"I will hurt you, you will learn this, you'll be sorry, you'll learn to stop missing them."_

18. – Dream

His Sharingan lets him play with her mind – sometimes he does it while she sleeps, catching her eyes in between one REM blink and the next.

19. – Candle

When she's back in Konoha, the wavering light of a candle-flame is enough to cast Tenten into a deep reverie.

2o. – Talent

_'I'm not like you, I'm not a prodigy,'_ she protests when he demands she learn; he sneers and says she is too used to hiding behind her teammates to let herself fully embrace her potential.

21. – Silence

She thinks the reason she gets to understand Sasuke's unspoken words so well is practice with Neji; but that does not explain why, when she gets back to Konoha, she can no longer translate the white-eyed boy's movements.

22. – Journey

One day, she just paused, and looked down at the younger ninja sleeping easily beside her – sprawled on the grass, sweat from their recent training-session drying on his face – and wondered how they had gotten from_ there_ (anger and hate and fear) to _here. _(And where _was _here?)

23. – Fire

Sasuke – child of the Uchiha clan that he was – knows every fire jutsu in Konoha, and since Karyuu Endan is (as yet) beyond her, Tenten begs him to teach her the Ryuuka no Jutsu.

24. – Strength

After a while – and after four casualties: two slain, one crippled and one blinded, all of whom had been prone to speculating wildly about "Sasuke-_sama's_ new whore" - Sound learns to respect the Konoha weapons-user, for her power if nothing else.

25. – Mask

Hidden Sound is more than missing-nin and power-grabs – there are shops, and eateries, and music-halls there, and Tenten actually visits some of them under henge.

26. – Ice

The first time she pins him is forever engraved in his mind: the silence of the forest, her exercise-flushed face hovering above his, and how the edge of her katana – no cheap, short ninjato for her – felt ice-cold against the skin of his throat.

27. – Fall

When, she wonders with something that might be despair or might be a wild, wild joy – when did she decide she would stay with him?

28. – Forgotten

She realizes, with a start, that it has been almost a full week since she had thought of Konoha.

29. – Dance

Sasuke watches Tenten sleepily make her way towards him, automatically dodging the heaps and piles of weapons – a pile of kunai there, twinned kodachi over there, a six-foot-tall _zweihander_ from across the seas sunk half a foot into the wooden floor – scattered all over her room, and thinks that, just crossing the floor, Tenten looks like she's dancing.

3o. – Body

"The human body isn't meant to take so much punishment, Sasuke-kun," Kabuto warns him, hands hovering above an unconscious Tenten – Sasuke only ignores him.

31. – Sacred

"She is _not _for the likes of you," Sasuke tells a group of Sound-nin eying 'the prisoner' with hungry eyes, voice cool and mocking rather than warning.

32. – Farewells

They didn't say goodbye – she just backed, and turned, and ran, while around them Sound bayed for her blood.

33. – World

For the first few months, Sasuke is careful to keep the injured, wounded, broken kunoichi away from other elements of Sound Village – his rooms, and him, and their sparring-grounds out in the deep forest make up her entire world.


	2. themes thirty four through fifty

continuation of the previous piece

* * *

34. – Formal 

She calls him Sasuke-sama in a way that is just short of being an insult – but when she calls him 'sadist' or 'asshole' they aren't, somehow.

35. – Fever

"You look flushed," Tenten observes, bending over his prone form and pressing her hand to his brow, and he tries not to look at her.

36. – Laugh

She is sprawled on the ground, buried beneath three hundred pounds of her own weapons, and she does not care, because she is too busy gaping at the way Sasuke's lips are twitching suspiciously.

37. – Lies

"No, your old team hasn't been seen anywhere near here," Sasuke told her, red eyes spinning.

38. – Forever

He knows this will end soon, but he doesn't let himself think about that – only about the next day's sparring.

39. – Overwhelmed

Her arm is wrenched behind her, and she can feel the bone crack; the rest of her body is in similar pain, and she bows her head – he had won, utterly.

4o. – Whisper

"He smiles now," one Sound-nin hissed to another, "Do you think she's bedding him?"

41. – Wait

She finds herself pacing, sleepless and uneasy, the nights she knows Sasuke is not safe in his room next to hers.

42. – Talk

"This conversation is pointless," Sasuke told her, flushing – why did she want to know his favorite color, of all things?

43. – Search

There were three men who looked for her, but she never knew.

44. – Hope

Her hopes changed – she stopped hoping to be rescued, and began hoping – planning - to rescue herself.

45. – Eclipse

Her scroll unfurls like a ribbon of white-and-black silk rather than heavy parchment, her blood a bright red streak down its center – and suddenly there are kunai and senbon arcing into the air, thousands, millions, filling the horizon – blotting out the sun.

46. – Gravity

She is too exhausted from sparring to keep from tripping over an exposed tree-root, and he is too exhausted to move out of the way, so they end up sprawled on top of each other

47. – Highway

"You'll do it this way," Sasuke tells her, laying out a training schedule in front of her, with focuses on areas she does not like. "You'll do it my way, or..."

48. – Unknown

Sasuke never let her name be known to the rank-and-file of the Sound-nin; they had to come up with their own names for her.

49. – Lock

She got up for a walk before remembering that she couldn't leave her room after hours – but the door swung open at her touch.

5o. – Breathe

Sasuke slanted his mouth over hers, trying to push air into her failing lungs – inwardly cursing her growing inclination to try out dangerous techniques _without him._

* * *

**fin **


End file.
